THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
@ Aerial Explorations, Inc.
THE ANCIENT CHURCH IN CHIVAY SERVED AN UNEXPECTED PURPOSE
From its roof (see illustration, page 115) messages were picked up by the Washington. Transit
sights from the top of the highest peak in the background (16,500 feet) made it possible to tie
in the ground control for the aerial maps.
One gathers from the chronicles that the
Collahuas were incorporated into the Inca
Empire by the Emperor Mayta Capac,
who ruled about 1195-1230. This end he
achieved by marriage with the daughter of
the chief of the Collahuas, backed up by
a war against that tribe.
It is clearly indicated, not only in the
chronicles, but also by ruins in the valley
to-day, that the population was consider
able at the time of the Spanish Conquest.
Then there must have been good crops of
maize, potatoes, and of the cereal known
as quinoa. Melting snows of the higher
mountains watered the fields.
Colonization of the valley by the Span
iards was apparently not difficult.
"The
Indians of this province are settled in per
manent villages already formed; but an
ciently, before the general visitation of Don
Francisco de Toledo, they had many ham
lets. Toledo put them in the larger and
more commodious villages where they now
are. Their understanding is, for Indians,
good; and they display reason in the af
fairs with which they concern themselves.
There are among them good scriveners,
singers, and musicians upon the flutes and
flageolets, and they have aptitude for even
more difficult things. Their inclination is
toward feasts and banquets and pastimes,
and their manners are affable and but little
marked by covetousness.
.
"
In early days the valley belonged to the
Diocese of Cusco, 45 leagues distant by a
reasonably good road. Each of the 14
towns had a church and a priest appointed
by the Viceroy on behalf of the Crown.
The churches, however, had been built and
adorned by the Friars of San Francisco,
who won the people away from their pagan
cults.
In several churches of the Colca Valley
are statues of Philip II of Spain. That
fact, together with the testimony of sev
eral 17th-century documents, indicates that
the King was, at any rate indirectly, the
founder of the towns in question. In 1573
Philip II set forth in minute detail the out
ward characteristics which new towns were
to have. The Colca towns conform in
almost every detail-in the arrangement
of the plazas, with the churches slightly
raised and blocked off; in the rectangular
116